SME Advisor 137

ISSUE 137 MONTHLY FOCUS: FUTURE OF BUSINESS

FUELLING THE

FUTURE OF FINTECH RAJA AL MAZROUEI – ACTING EVP, FINTECH HIVE AT DIFC

I NT RO D UC IN G

Welcome to SME Advisor's portal dedicated to the future.

You know what fascinates us the most about the future?

Everyone has their own way of perceiving it.

So, what do you think the future will look like four years from today?

1

2 Exploring exciting perceptions of the future

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Preparing strategies to seize opportunities of the future

Exploring businesses that have promising new ideas in VR, robotics, fintech and more.

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SME Advisor Middle East is aimed at business owners and senior executives across the GCC. Armed with practical advice, it has been highlighting key business issues for the small and medium enterprise segment since its launch in 2005.

The magazine addresses real issues faced by business decision makers, without resorting to jargon.

We understand that often, in small and medium enterprises, specialist business decisions are made by the owners and not by an army of c-level executives. At the same time, our content is equally relevant and useful for specialist, senior executives in mid-level enterprises.

The magazine style is consumer, conversational and colourful.

From the web

Microsoft unveils an explanatory video on AI The tech giant recently released its first episode explaining the concept of Artifical Intelligence and how businesses can seize its opportunities. An excerpt from its official website explains: “Artificial Intelligence, as we see it, is a collection of multiple technologies that enable machines to sense, comprehend and act—and learn, either on their own or to augment human activities. Accenture research on the impact of AI in 12 developed economies reveals that AI could double annual economic growth rates in 2035 by changing the nature of work and creating a new relationship between man and machine.”

To watch the video, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NsilUpnRY0.

Co Founder and CEO Nadeem Hood

Co Founder and COO Georgina Larsen

Editor in Chief Rushika Bhatia rushika@cpibusiness.net

Design Team Solomon Arthur solomon@cpibusiness.net Juzer Karbalai juzer@cpibusiness.net

Video Producer Murtaza Yousuf murtaza@cpibusiness.net Relationship Manager Freshia Mistry freshia@cpibusiness.net Web Developer Aneel Sarwar aneel@cpibusiness.net

Published By: CPI Business FZ LLC Office 111, Building 4 Dubai Media City Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Assistant Video Producer Farzan Akmal farzan@cpibusiness.net

Expo 2020 partners with Accenture

The partnership comes in line with Expo 2020’s vision to be the fastest, smartest and most connected spaces. It will explore areas from information security and customer relations to virtual assistance and geolocation services. “We are delighted to welcome Accenture as our Digital Services Partner,” said Her Excellency Reem Al Hashimy, UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation and Director General, Bureau Dubai Expo 2020. “Innovation and technology are at the heart of World Expos and Accenture is a world leader in technology and business innovation and digital transformation.

Event Coordinator Zainab Murtaza zainab@cpibusiness.net Printed by Print Well Printing Press Contact Details: Tel: +971 4 433 2446 Email: info@cpibusiness.net Web: www.cpibusiness.net

SME Advisor ME

© Copyright 2017 CPI Business.

All rights reserved.

While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

To read more, please visit: http://www.expo2020dubai.ae/

SAP launches new IoT solution

In an effort to help local businesses with their digitisation process, SAP launched new solutions to its digital innovation system SAP Leonardo. Speaking of the announcement, Dr Tanja Rueckert, President, IoT and Digital Supply Chain, SAP, said: “With SAP Leonardo as our digital innovation system, our new solutions and the many customers and partners demonstrating real-life use cases with us at SAP Leonardo Live, we are defining the path to digital transformation with innovation that can scale across the entire organisation.”

To read more, please visit: www.sap.com.

Editor’s Note

RUSHIKA BHATIA EDITOR

WHEN FORESIGHT MEETS ACTION… Whether it’s a 10-year dreaming about their future job or a 21-year old anticipating what their first pay cheque will look like, we all love making predictions about the future. Perhaps, there’s a certain fascination with the unknown that gets us excited.

In fact, the business landscape is no different. Successful leaders across the world have often shared their foresight, giving their two cents about the future. And, there’s nothing wrong with it. On the contrary, farsightedness is the sign of a smart leader.

The problem, however, is that most business leaders think of foresight as identifying opportunities of the future and investing in them. But, what if instead you focus on the borderline unimaginable? What if you look at things that are likely to change the way you do business completely?

And then, prepare yourself against them. That’s where the real value of foresight is. The beauty of this kind of foresight is that you aren’t just waiting for a prediction to come true to seize the opportunity, you are taking control of uncertainty and molding it to your benefit.

This has been the case for the likes of Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, who have dictated the future and shaped it rather than just predicting it.

Finally, foresight is one thing and implementation of it is another. You can predict all you want, but if you aren’t able to act to prepare yourself for what’s to come, there’s no point.

This month, we are featuring three home-grown businesses that have followed their instincts about the future and are actually taking action –

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Nester: Transportation has been an industry sector buzzing with innovations, but not much has been done within the parking space. Nester takes a leap with its innovative solution and promises to change the way people find parking spots.

If the concept reaches its full potential, we are in for a parking overhaul!

Bayzat: The company’s smart solution is helping businesses with their insurance and HR decision-making processes. With most administrative tasks going digital, this proves to be a game-changer for businesses. In the future, we will see a large proportion of employee-related data being stored and handled online.

Enjoy reading this issue of SME Advisor! Until next time…

Shedul.com: It’s difficult to think of a way to revolutionise the way spas and salons are run. It’s all too simple, isn’t it? Yet, Shedul.com has found a way to streamline processes and increase efficiency. How? It’s smart, flexible software that speeds up the appointment process and improves staff productivity.

Contents

Businesses of the future 018/ Fourth Industrial Revolution: defining the new normal

Future of finance 024

FinTech in focus

032/ Blockchain for business

Future of retail 038/ The changing face of retail 040/ Reimagining retail

024/

THE TECHNOLOGY OF MONEY HAS CONTINUOUSLY BEEN EVOLVING THROUGH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF NETWORKED MACHINES, DIGITAL VERIFICATION AND THE UPSURGE OF SMARTPHONES. WE’VE NOTICED A RAPID CHANGE IN THE WAY PEOPLE USE MONEY FOR VARIOUS DAILY TRANSACTIONS.

032/

BLOCKCHAIN WILL MOST LIKELY DISRUPT THE COMPLETE TRADE AND SUPPLY CHAIN FINANCE INDUSTRY BECAUSE OF THE REDUCED COSTS AND TRUST IT CAN PROVIDE Future game-changers 046/ Bayzat’s breakthroughs: Future, funding and finding success 052/ Parking, at your fingertips!

058/ Shedul’s smart, sensible software

Future of education 068/ Rebuilding traditional school systems

Future of technology 070/ Life in a smart city 076/ Tiny devices, giant possibilities 082/ Ingenious invention of the month

How will the fourth industrial revolution shape factories of the future?

18 32

Have you ever wondered what living in a smart city feels like?

Well, an expert shares their personal experience...

40 As e-commerce booms, traditional retailers face the urgent need to rethink their customer experience strategies...

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Imagine a time when you wouldn’t have to look for a parking - it would be available for you instantly.

Blockchain provides significant opportunities to businesses, and here’s how to benefit from them.

24 We speak to the genius leading the region’s FinTech ambitions.

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C O N T E N T C U R ATO R S 016

CONTENT CURATORS

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Presenting this month’s portfolio of industry specialists and thought leaders, who played a critical role in producing the feature content of our magazine and ensuring that we were more topical than ever.

BRAD KEYWELL CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, UPTAKE .

““ IBRAHIM NAJI CO-FOUNDER, IMPACTED

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Software and technology have the potential to empower people to a far greater degree than in the past—unlocking the latent creativity, perception and imagination of human beings at every level of every organisation.

Children that are currently in highschools are the ones that will shape our tomorrow. Therefore, providing companies with a portal into these students’ minds is what is going to sustain them. This is how you bring real world problem-solving to the K-12 market without compromising the value for companies.

C O N T E N T C U R ATO R S 017

““ HOLLIS THOMASES FOUNDER, REINVENTIONWORKS

The retail experience has to be one that cannot be replicated at home or anywhere on a device.

““ JOHN ROACH WRITER AND RESEARCHER, MICROSOFT

Creating the intelligent edge is a step toward realising the promise of a world populated with tiny intelligent devices at every turn – embedded in our clothes, scattered around our homes and offices and deployed to perform tasks such as anomaly detection and predictive maintenance everywhere from car engines and elevators to operating rooms and oil rigs.

““ KENDRA L. SMITH POLICY ANALYST MORRISON

Smart cities can improve the efficiency of city services by eliminating redundancies, finding ways to save money and streamlining workers’ responsibilities. The results can provide higher-quality services at lower cost.

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Fourth Industrial

REVOLUTION: Defining the new normal

Brad Keywell, Co-founder and CEO of Uptake, weighs the possible challenges and opportunities of surviving in a new era‌

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. In the same way that chess masters and computers work best together, the mechanic used human skills that a machine can’t replicate: ingenuity, creativity and experience.

02. Through ground-breaking technology, unprecedented processing power and speed, and massive storage capacity, data is being collected and harnessed like never before.

T

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The world is changing. There’s no way around this fact. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is now. And, whether you know it or not, it will affect you.

Billions of people and countless machines are connected to each other. Through ground-breaking technology, unprecedented processing power and speed, and massive storage capacity, data is being collected and harnessed like never before. Automation, machine learning, mobile computing and artificial intelligence — these are no longer futuristic concepts, they are our reality.

To many people, these changes are scary.

Previous industrial revolutions have shown us that if companies and industries don’t adapt with new technology, they struggle. Worse, they fail.

Mind-set shift But I strongly believe that these innovations will make industry – and the world – stronger and better. The change brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution is inevitable, not optional.

And the possible rewards are staggering: heightened standards of living; enhanced safety and security; and greatly increased human capacity. For people, there must be a shift in mind-set.

As difficult as it may be, the future of work looks very different from the past.

I believe people with grit, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit will embrace this future, rather than cling to the status quo.

People can be better at their jobs with the technology of today—and the technology

B usinesses of the future 021

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Humans can be more stubborn, but also can read their opponent’s weaknesses, evaluate complex patterns, and make creative and strategic decisions to win.

that is yet to come—rather than fearing that their human skills will be devalued.

Human and machine I’m reminded of chess. We have all heard the stories about computers beating even the greatest grandmasters. But the story is more nuanced; humans and computers play differently and each has strengths and weaknesses. Computers prefer to retreat, but they can store massive amounts of data and are unbiased in their decision-making.

Humans can be more stubborn, but also can read their opponent’s weaknesses, evaluate complex patterns, and make creative and strategic decisions to win.

Even the creators of artificial chess-playing machines acknowledge that the best chess

player is actually a team of both human and machine.

The world will always need human brilliance, human ingenuity and human skills.

Software and technology have the potential to empower people to a far greater degree than in the past—unlocking the latent creativity, perception and imagination of human beings at every level of every organisation.

Power of data, power of people This shift will enable workers on the front line, on the road and in the field to make smarter decisions, solve tougher problems and do their jobs better. This is our mission at Uptake—to combine the power of

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BRAD KEYWELL CO-FOUNDER AND CEO UPTAKE

data and the power of people, across global industries.

Here’s what this looks like: Railroad locomotives are powered by massive, highly complex electrical engines that cost millions of dollars.

When one breaks down, the railroad loses thousands more for every hour it’s out of service (not to mention, there are a lot of angry travellers or cargo customers to deal with).

After the locomotive is towed in for repairs, technicians normally start by running diagnostic tests. These can take hours, and often require technicians to stand next to roaring engines jotting down numbers based on the diagnostic readings. That’s the old way – or, at least, it should be.

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New solutions When locomotives operated by our customers roll into the shop for routine services, all diagnostics have already been run. Our software has forecast when, why and how the machine is likely to break down using predictive analytics — algorithms that analyse massive amounts of data generated by the 250 sensors on each locomotive.

Our systems have examined that data within the context of similar machines, subject- matter experts, industry norms and even weather. If there’s a problem, we detect it, and direct the locomotive to a repair facility. A mechanic can then simply pick up an iPad, and learn in a few minutes exactly what is about to break down, as well as the machine’s history and the conditions it’s been operating under.

Virtuous loop

B usinesses of the future 023

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Automation, machine learning, mobile computing and artificial intelligence — these are no longer futuristic concepts, they are our reality.

That leaves the mechanics to do what they do best: fix it, using their experience, judgement and skill. And the mechanic’s decisions and actions become data that feeds back into the software, improving the analytics and predictions for the next problem. So, technology didn’t replace mechanics; it empowered them to do their job.

In the same way that chess masters and computers work best together, the mechanic used human skills that a machine can’t replicate: ingenuity, creativity and experience. And the technology detected a problem that was unknown and unseen to human eyes. In short, when the mechanic and the technology work together, the work gets done faster, with fewer errors and better results.

Multiply this across all industries: aviation, energy, transportation, smart cities, manufacturing, natural resources, and construction. The productivity we unleash could be reminiscent of what the world saw at the advent of the first industrial revolution. But the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution will run much broader, and deeper, than the first.

We’ll have the knowledge, the talent and the tools to solve some of the world’s biggest problems: hunger, climate change, disease. Machines will supply us with the insight and the perspective we need to reach those solutions. But they won’t supply the judgement or the ingenuity.

People will.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM’S WWW.WEFORUM.ORG.

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FINTECH IN FOCUS She’s far-sighted, ambitious and has a strong financial acumen. As SME Advisor gets the chance to sit down with her, there’s no wonder why she’s at the forefront of the region’s most important FinTech development.

She’s none other than Raja Al Mazrouei – Acting EVP of FinTech Hive at the prestigious DIFC. In a very short span of time, she’s managed to steer her initiative into an exciting phase; opening doors to FinTech start-ups from around the globe and giving a select few a platform to showcase themselves. Our conversation with her sheds light on the state of FinTech in the UAE, its future proposition and how it will disrupt the banking industry. Here are excerpts from the insightful chat…

20%

77%

OF GLOBAL RESPONDENTS EXPECT ANNUAL ROI ON THEIR FINTECH PROJECT

OF GLOBAL RESPONDENTS ARE LOOKING TO ADOPT BLOCKCHAIN BY 2020

US$ 50 BN

70%

INVESTMENT IN GLOBAL FINTECH SECTOR SINCE 2010

BELIEVE THE GCC BANKING SECTOR IS OPEN TO FINTECH INNOVATION

US$ 50 MN

US$ 18 MN

THE AMOUNT FINTECH COMPANIES IN THE REGION EXPECT TO RAISE THIS YEAR

THE AMOUNT FINTECH COMPANIES IN THE REGION RAISED LAST YEAR

250

US$ 100 MN

THE NUMBER OF FINTECH START-UP LAUNCHES PAYFORT PREDICTS BY 2020

THE AMOUNT OF FUNDING MENA’S FINTECH START-UPS HAVE RAISED OVER THE PAST DECADE

43%

90%

RISE IN FINTECH INVESTMENTS IN TERMS OF DEAL FLOW FROM 2015-2016

OF THE REGION’S UNBANKED CUSTOMERS HAVEN’T STARTED TO ADOPT FINTECH SOLUTIONS

SOURCES: YOUGOV, WAMDA, PAYFORT, PWC’S GLOBAL FINTECH REPORT 2017

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. The evolution of the FinTech sector will have significant repercussions on the country’s economy, including wider access to financial services to a larger pool of clientele.

02. Larger organisations must also provide the smaller FinTech firms with access to a communal workspace, legal workshops and other knowledge-sharing initiatives that will help the start-ups pave their way in the increasingly competitive financial industry.

1. How would you describe the FinTech ecosystem in the UAE? Sector investment in the region is set to grow by 270 per cent in 2017, according to a recent report by Wamda. Through various initiatives and programmes established across the country, the UAE has pledged to support the rise of the FinTech industry and benefit from the key opportunities it brings to the private sector, including enhancing highlyskilled workers, as well as unlocking additional resourcis and capital. Smart Dubai, a strategy born out of the visionary approach of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, pushes institutions to embrace technology innovation, making Dubai the most efficient, seamless, safe and impactful experience for residents and visitors.

2. How does it compare to the global scenario?

The global FinTech sector has attracted more than US$50 billion in investment since 2010, but the Gulf region only accounts for around one per cent of that. The evolution of the FinTech sector will have significant repercussions on the country’s economy, including wider access to financial services to a larger pool of clientele. Wamda Research Lab (WRL) and PayFort recently found that FinTech companies in the region expect to raise US$50 million this year, compared with US$18 million last year – potentially fuelling a huge increase in sector growth.

3. How is FinTech impacting the banking industry?

We have seen tremendous interest from major financial institutions operating in the UAE to work closely with innovative start-ups that may have the capacity to address sector-specific challenges.

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In a recent survey by EY, 70 per cent of participants stated that the GCC banking sector would be open to integrating FinTech innovations into their businesses to help enhance their customer experience and day-to-day operations.

The FinTech industry is also reshaping fundraising practices by offering alternative platforms for commercial and personal lending. The major players in the banking industry understand the implications that FinTech may have on their business and are keen on investing in original ideas and unprecedented solutions.

4. What opportunities does FinTech offer?

The evolution of the FinTech industry in the region can help re-shape processes involved in the offering of financial products, leading to shorter application time and more focused customer engagement via technology. As a result, financial institutions can extend their services to a larger client base.

FinTech firms provide creative ideas and unconventional solutions, which will help the financial services sector address problems relating to customer experience and cross-border services. With 70 per cent of the region’s population unbanked, there’s a visible need for innovative FinTech solutions, which will help provide this large percentage of the population, who can’t get to physical bank branches, with access to the latest services and financial solutions.

5. We are seeing several FinTech start-ups emerge. How do large organisations need to support their growth and advancement?

In the past, regional funding for FinTech has been very limited. The International

future of finance 027

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The evolution of the FinTech industry in the region can help re-shape processes involved in the offering of financial products, leading to shorter application time and more focused customer engagement via technology.

Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that the current SME funding gap in global emerging markets is more than US$2 trillion and approximately US$260 billion in MENA. Therefore, investing in these start-ups is crucial for their growth and development. Larger organisations must also provide the smaller FinTech firms with access to a communal workspace, legal workshops and other knowledgesharing initiatives that will help the startups pave their way in the increasingly competitive financial industry.

At FinTech Hive at DIFC, we allow selected participants to develop and test their technologies under the dedicated supervision and guidance of senior executives from DIFC and

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regional financial institutions, alike.

It is a dynamic programme that will continuously develop to address the needs of the FinTech industry in the region. In due course, we aim to provide a co-working space for creative start-ups in Dubai, offer more specialised mentorship programmes, and facilitate partnerships with public and private sector entities.

6. Are we progressively moving towards a cashless economy? What steps need to be undertaken to achieve that goal?

The technology of money has continuously been evolving through the implementation of networked machines, digital verification and the upsurge of smartphones. We’ve noticed a rapid

future of finance 029

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At FinTech Hive at DIFC, we allow selected participants to develop and test their technologies under the dedicated supervision and guidance of senior executives from DIFC and regional financial institutions, alike.

change in the way people use the money for various daily transactions. In a recent EY survey, 36 per cent of respondents stated that up to 10 per cent of the GCC banking sector is at risk of being lost to stand-alone FinTech firms in the next five years. In addition, we have witnessed significant regulatory discussions aimed at accommodating FinTech start-ups in India following an executive order last November by Prime Minister Modi to retire 86 per cent of bank notes in circulation.

In 2015, the Singaporean Government demonstrated its commitment to the industry when it established a FinTech & Innovation Group within the central bank.

These are a testament that we are on the edge of becoming a cashless society. To ensure that these transactions are safe and credible, financial institutions must

invest heavily in their cybersecurity offerings and promote programmes that educate their staff, as well as consumers, about cashless economies and its implications on their financial transactions.

One example is DIFC’s role as a founding member of the Global Blockchain Council, a strategic initiative of the Government of Dubai, aimed at exploring opportunities to apply blockchain technology to financial services.

7. What are some of the critical factors for the UAE to become a FinTech hub?

The UAE has great potential to maintain its position as the region’s leading FinTech Hub, as well as extend its influence globally. Through attractive tax exemptions and a robust judicial system

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FinTech firms provide creative ideas and unconventional solutions, which will help the financial services sector address problems relating to customer experience and crossborder services.

based on Western markets, Dubai has positioned itself as a regional platform for international financial players looking to set up in the Middle East, and at the same time encouraged the growth of home-grown financial institutions that cater directly to local demand. To secure its place as a FinTech hub, the UAE needs to create an environment where financial firms and technology companies can operate alongside each other. This means considering regulatory frameworks for FinTech firms, lowering the cost of starting a business, easing trade licence acquisition and speeding authorisations for companies to begin operating.

8. Can you tell us about DIFC’s FinTech and innovation priorities?

As the leading financial centre in the region, with an existing community of more than 21,000 professionals working across 1,600 firms, DIFC is the ideal platform to help both small start-ups and large financial institutions complement each other’s offerings. With the

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establishment of FinTech Hive at DIFC, a first-of-its-kind accelerator in the region, we are looking to build on our existing FinTech ecosystem and bring cuttingedge financial services technology to the broader Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

Through the 12-week accelerator programme, FinTech Hive at DIFC intends to bridge the SME funding gap by offering leading technology entrepreneurs and companies the opportunity to collaborate and develop the necessary solutions to meet the needs of a larger client base. FinTech Hive at DIFC also presents the start-ups with the opportunity to showcase their products in front of potential investors from the large players in the financial industry.

In addition, we are seeing ongoing regulatory updates designed to meet FinTech industry requirements rolling out from the DFSA, including crowdfunding regulations and the Innovation Testing Licence.

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BLOCKCHAIN FOR BUSINESS How can SMEs deploy blockchain technology and exploit its advantages? Jean-Luc Scherer and Christophe Pinot of Innoopolis review existing data and tackle the question…

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Blockchain is what is called a distributed ledger technology. Initially developed as the technology to support the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, it has now outgrown that initial objective.

02. Blockchain will most likely disrupt the complete trade and supply chain finance industry because of reduce cost and trust it can provide.

T CHRISTOPHE PINOT COO, INNOOPOLIS

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he Middle East is known for its trading based history but also for its rapid growth based on oil revenues. At the same time, the dependency on oil has been recognised as a major threat to the sustainability of the Gulf countries continued growth and to the regional prosperity in general. To move away from this dependency, it is essential to transform the economy, it is key to move to a knowledge-based economy, but it is also important to revitalise its SME businesses.

In the Gulf, the SME businesses contribute to an average of 15 to 30 per cent of the overall countries’ GDP, according to a report from the Union of Arab Bank. This is very small

compared to the US or some of the European countries where this contribution is around 50 per cent and 65 per cent respectively. In the region, SME Businesses have been mainly suffering from bureaucracy and a lack of financing options. This is where Blockchain can potentially come to the rescue and stimulate the SME segment.

Really? So how will Blockchain help?

Without dwelling too much on the definition of Blockchain, it is important for first-time readers to briefly recap what Blockchain is all about.

Blockchain 101 Blockchain is what is called a distributed ledger technology. Initially developed as the technology to support the crypto-

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Blockchain provides trust between untrusted parties, it means that new types of lenders could potentially start making their capital available through new blockchain applications.

currency Bitcoin, it has now outgrown that initial objective.

Essentially, Blockchain is a network of computers, known as miners, who enable digital transactions. It is a peer-to-peer, anonymous network. Blockchain enables the building of a distributed database of transactions with a set of rules as to how the ledger gets appended, achieved by distributed consensus of participants in the system. The Blockchain keeps track of all transactions in a distributed way, where all participants have a copy of the ledger and can potentially validate any future transactions. It records and stores every transaction or exchange of data that occurs in the network, eliminating the need for a central authority and providing greater transparency for regulatory reporting. This technology is valuable particularly for applications where there is a need to provide a quick, secure and permanent date and time stamp of transactions.

Applications of Blockchain While Blockchain will potentially impact many industries, the characteristics and cost efficient nature of validating and permanently dating and time stamping transactions means it is very applicable to payments, to the transfer of assets, to the establishments of smart contracts and to public notary services. Earlier this year, Mc Kinsey and Company, a well-known consulting firm, released a report analysing 80 known use-cases for Blockchain; about 50 per cent of these were related to financial services. The overall impact of these use-cases was estimated to a staggering US$ 80-110 bn, with trade finance representing about US$ 15 bn of its own. Blockchain as a technology is becoming more and more of a deal for financial institutions, but it

has also become a huge focus for startups that see opportunities to disrupt value chains. Over the last 24 months over US$ 1 bn venture capital has poured into Blockchain technology and applications.

A breath of air for SMEs through trade financing SMEs dealing with the import and export of goods are usually faced with the need for capital, on one side they need capital to acquire the raw materials they need to produce the products they are trying to sell and on the other side they need capital to ship these products to their end destination. That access to capital is referred to as trade financing. For international trade, this is becoming an increasing problem, especially as payment terms have started to deteriorate over the years. It is not uncommon to end-up with payments received up the 120 days after invoice. This creates huge cash-flow problems, and at the same time, banks are becoming reluctant to lend money or lend it at high-interest rates due to the risk in delayed payments. Access to trade financing is often critical to achieving growth.

Trade finance, which deals with the financing of importing or exporting of goods/services domestically and internationally is full of complicated paper-heavy practices, it is full of inefficiencies. Blockchain will most likely disrupt the complete trade and supply chain finance industry because of reduced cost and trust it can provide. The benefits of Blockchain are multiple: • By being able to digitally timestamp various parts of the supply chain process we have a proof of when goods or raw materials are shipped and received.

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• Settlement of the payment can

JEAN-LUC SCHERER FOUNDER AND CEO, INNOOPOLIS

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be streamlined. Different parties on the Blockchain have real-time visibility into what parts of the contract have been executed on and can hence execute payments quicker and with more assurance.

The ownership of receivables (e.g. purchase orders or payables) can be distributed on a Blockchain.

With the Blockchain, the automation of payment to the supplier can be triggered upon pre-programmed conditions. This should overall positively impact payment terms in the long term.

• When assets are transferred from party to party, they will have a digital asset attached

to them and can be verified by several peers in a network, hence increasing trust.

• By having real-time visibility on the Blockchain, there is an opportunity to automate contracts.

This should also allow for faster approvals and speedier payment.

• There is less risk for fraud since the truth is held by a single real-time source that is shared simultaneously across the Blockchain network Overall the Blockchain network should facilitate the interworking between IT systems, financial systems and ledgers that are today primarily managed in silos and require heavy manual processes.

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The payment can then be automatically executed as soon as you sign that the goods have been received. The reduction in paper work, as well as the opportunities for automation, should greatly reduce cost and improve efficiencies of the business.

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While many analysts believe that it is probably going to take another five years for commercial blockchain applications to appear, the opportunity that blockchain will provide to SMEs can simply not be ignored

Less paper work and automation in supply chains Using the same infrastructure as described above SMEs could also achieve major improvements in the management of their inventories and streamline management of warehouses.

This could lead to the following scenario. When your company’s inventory management system detects a low stock on an item in demand it could automatically issue a purchase order to the supplier. The supplier would automatically and digitally sign the contract, ship the goods and send an invoice, which is also stored on the Blockchain. As a buyer, your company digitally signs the invoices with a promise to pay as soon as the goods are received.

Peer-to-Peer lending could provide alternative financing for SMEs Another opportunity that Blockchain will provide to SMEs is the ability to access new alternative financing options.

Since Blockchain provides trust between untrusted parties, it means that new types of lenders could potentially start making their capital available through new Blockchain applications. Blockchain’s scripting language can in a sense be compared to an ‘escrow’ model, i.e., securely stored and verified funds or opposed to the role of a Federal Bank.

Funds can be delivered once certain conditions are met. This is an area that is of particular interest for startups that work on varies types of P2P lending solutions. This approach could be particularly disruptive to banks. The Blockchain in itself is very cost-efficient, so a peer-to-peer based lending solution could quickly erode interest rates that banks are charging SMEs. Hang in there the future is bright for SMEs While many analysts believe it is probably going to take another five years for commercial Blockchain applications to appear, the opportunity that Blockchain will provide to SMEs can simply not be ignored. From streamlining contracts, to supply chain and trade financing, or to getting access the alternative financing, Blockchain will allow SMEs to compete in ways never seen before.

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THE CHANGING FACE OF RETAIL PEOPLE AT HOME: 39% say that social networks provide their main inspiration for purchases.

1.6 Customers that watch a retail video are 1.6 times more likely to make a purchase.

35% of customers use price comparison websites as an inspiration for their purchases.

67% of consumers are influenced by social media reviews before they make purchasing decisions.

SOURCES: WEBLOYALTY/CONLUMINO; CONNECTED COMMERCE; DIGITASLBI; PWC, TOTAL RETAIL 2017; INVODO 2015; GARTNER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE REPORT; AND RETAIL ASSIST GLOBAL RETAIL SURVEY. SME ADVISOR

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PEOPLE SHOPPING IN THE MALL: 41%

18%

of global consumers shop in-store at least once a week

of consumers leave a store after consulting their mobile and finding a product cheaper elsewhere.

77%

70%

of consumers want to see personalisation in their products and services, says a Retail Assist Global Retail Survey.

of customers say that having sales associates with a strong knowledge of the product range is important when in-store shopping.

PEOPLE SHOPPING ONLINE: 28%

74%

of global consumers shop less often at retail stores due to Amazon.com.

of online shoppers find new products through reviews and recommendations on websites and social media.

31%

60%

of online shoppers share their reviews with friends and social connections.

of customers prefer to buy books, music, movies & video games online.

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REIMAGINING

RETAIL How can traditional retail stores and shopping malls keep up pace with rapidly changing customer preferences? Hollis Thomases, Founder of ReinventionWorks, answers the burning question‌

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Too many consumers are just shopping differently now, never leaving their desks or seat in front of the TV or at a coffee shop.

02. Malls with a plethora of high-end stores that attract shoppers and oglers alike; malls that realised they needed a major facelift or else; malls that continue to morph into entertainment centres more than shopping destinations.

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Coordinate with device-friendly shopping techniques (codes, beacons, apps) and generate more impulse purchases.

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et me start this piece by saying that I’m no retail industry expert.

When it comes to retail, I’m just an ordinary consumer like everyone else. Perhaps the only difference is that I’ve been working in digital commerce a long time and saw the writing on the wall…and the walls of traditional retail – “bricks and mortar,” as we used to say – should be really afraid.

Major anchor store retailers like JC Penney’s, Sears, and K-Marts continue to announce store closings across the US. Even stalwart Macy’s struggles to find its footing. As I walked through a Macy’s recently, I looked around making a mental tally of how many millions of dollars of inventory hung on untouched racks or lay on untouched shelves. I almost felt bad for these lonely items.

The closing of a single anchor retailer could gravely affect a mall, but the lack of overall business will kill it. Around the US, malls have begun to be demolished, malls that took millions of dollars to build.

What’s old is new again Yes, there are exceptions to the struggling shopping centre: Malls with a plethora of high-end stores that attract shoppers and oglers alike; malls that realised they needed a major facelift or else; malls that continue to morph into entertainment centres more than shopping destinations.

Will these changes resolve the problem or is the traditional shopping mall a dinosaur on the verge of extinction?

People blame on all kinds of economic conditions and over-saturation of retail stores in general, but let’s face it: our behaviours are changing. Too many consumers are just shopping differently now, never leaving their desks or seat in front of the TV or at a coffee shop. Just as downtown “Market Streets” died off as mid-20th century suburbia cropped up and people moved out of cities, both urban and suburban dwellers now no longer need to “go” anywhere to shop. Why bother getting showered and dressed to find a sale when you can do so from the comfort of your own home and when online shopping has

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The retail experience has to be one that cannot be replicated at home or anywhere on a device.

“experience” does come into play so often, and why there’s a resurgence of the old Market Street “town centre” hybrid model of living, shopping, dining, and entertainment – even mass exercise classes – all in the same several block location.

These town centres bring back a sense of togetherness and.

Reinventing the off-line retail experience People already socialise a-plenty online, so what makes a face-to-face experience still desirable? A lot of things. Basic human contact for starters – a hug hello, seeing the sparkle of glee in someone’s eye, hearing the same unexpected sound and turning heads towards it at the same time, or feeling the transference of their energy when

they’re really excited about something.

When we do things we like, and we do them together, there’s really nothing in the online world that comes close to how it makes us feel in the real world.

Retailers looking to reinvent should be trying to further enhance this coupling of tactile-plus-psychological bonding experience with the town centre experiences that already exist. For these, retailers need partners.

The industry doesn’t have to look too far. Take cues, for instance, from things that already achieve these bonding experiences and just magnify them:

ϭϭ Outdoor music concert “block

parties” with performer-related merchandise and similar themed gear

only gotten better and easier? Add a virtual reality shopping experience to the mix, and perhaps even fewer people will need to leave.

So, under what conditions do people want to bother with the muss and fuss of going out…at all? The way I see it, the retail industry can no longer work in isolation, expecting the act of shopping to itself alone be enough to attract customers.

There simply is no need. What there is a need for is experiences we cannot do alone.

Shopping needs to continue to become – or recapture? – the superlative social, interpersonal experience. It used to be good enough for the mall to be a destination at which people met to do the act of shopping (or for teenagers, to “just hang out”), but that’s no longer a good enough reason.

The retail experience has to be one that cannot be replicated at home or anywhere on a device. It has to be dynamic, stimulating, and meet other common socialising needs. Most people still fundamentally want to be around other people. It’s exactly why the word SME ADVISOR

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““

Once again, retail cannot work in isolation. It needs to partner with manufacturing technologists and get to work on justin-time inventory solutions.

ϭϭ Instant order runway-style fashion

shows with “show my size” models so shoppers of all sizes can get a better sense of how certain clothing or styles will look on them. Coordinate with device-friendly shopping techniques (codes, beacons, apps) and generate more impulse purchases.

ϭϭ Retailers and restauranteurs pair up

for direct marketing-style invite-yourfriend “parties” so merchandise can be tried on or sampled and purchased instantly.

ϭϭ Apartment brokers and retailers host

decorating classes with furniture and décor items available for immediate sale (and apartments for immediate rent).

ϭϭ Think of other paired activities and

themes exciting enough to get people out of their homes and down to the street, especially at typically lowpeak times. How about a “Cinema Sunday,” where people bring their own chairs to watch a free movie projected on the side of a building and instead of popcorn and candy concession stands, special preview items make their debut and orders for delivery can be taken before or after the show?

I’m sure you can think of plenty of other ideas that interplay retail, dining, entertainment, and streetscape experiences where the consumer gets persuaded to “Buy now!”

Brick and mortar retail’s one small advantage over its online counterparts (at least right now) revolves around filling last-minute needs. Split your pants, forgot

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that formal dinner this evening, or did the baby just spit-up all down the front of your blouse? Did an appliance break the morning you had to cook a meal for 12? Do you need a gift for a party your child neglected to mention? At least you can run to the store for that. But these needs don’t require having dozens and dozens of items in stock, or even the same item in all sizes and colours.

Once again, retail cannot work in isolation. It needs to partner with manufacturing technologists and get to work on just-in-time inventory solutions.

Fitting rooms could take on a whole new meaning: choose a style, pick from among real swatches of fabric, indicate your size, stand in front of a projector screen so you can view yourself in various colour choices. Approve the details, pay electronically, and your order gets transmitted to a production area where colours or designs are lasered onto your fabric and robots make the items in minutes, while you’re heading over to the pick-up area…where you could grab a coffee or charge or device while you wait. Perhaps the same justin-time solutions could apply to other products, such as those made through faster 3-D printers.

Or, if retail really overhauls itself altogether, perhaps consumers who need just-in-time purchases will just-have-to suffer with less choice. This may not be a bad thing, as recent research has shown that too many choices actually curtails consumers’ likelihood of buying.

One thing’s for certain: the Internet forever changed our shopping behaviour, and I don’t see that working in shopping malls’ favour. Malls take up a whole lot of acres of paved paradise that are prime for reclamation and reinvention.

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Established by The Duke of York, in less than three years Pitch@ Palace has helped over 350 businesses grow. In fact, some are now enjoying global success.

The Duke of York has partnered with Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development to bring Pitch@Palace Global to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The first Pitch@Palace UAE event will take place in October 2017.

The Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development aims to create a new generation of Emirati entrepreneurs by instilling and enriching the culture of entrepreneurship and innovation in the country.

It also looks to support the development of small and medium enterprises.

For more information, please visit www.khalifafund.ae.

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BAYZAT’S BREAKTHROUGHS: FUTURE, FUNDING AND FINDING SUCCESS Bayzat’s data-driven platform promises to simplify that way HR and insurance processes are carried out within companies.

Here’s how...

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. For health insurance, Bayzat helps individuals and companies compare, buy and use their health insurance.

02. In the last six months, Bayzat released its HR platform equipped with OCR technology that extracts data directly from scans like passport copies or Emirates ID, and a fully-fledged employee record system that can be synced with existing data in Excel direct to our cloudbased system.

TALAL BAYAA CO-FOUNDER, BAYZAT

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hen Talal Bayaa came up with the idea for Bayzat, the intention was to create a solution that digitises the HR and health insurance selection process for companies. With automation taking the hassle out of most administrative paperwork, these were areas that were still relatively labour-driven.

For health insurance, Bayzat helps individuals and companies compare, buy and use their health insurance. Meanwhile for HR, Bayzat Benefits™ helps companies automate all their HR admin work from data entry to managing employee records.

It ensures that all HR processes are centralised, accessible and secure.

In the last six months, Bayzat released its HR platform equipped with OCR technology that extracts data directly from scans like passport copies or Emirates ID, and a fully-fledged employee record system that can be synced with existing data in Excel direct to our cloud-based system. A couple of months ago, the company updated its HR platform to include a ‘leave management’ feature as well.

Funding to fuel growth Bayzat’s most recent funding round, of US$ 7.5 million, was in May 2017 and it deployed it towards R&D and expanding its workforce. Securing finance is one of the biggest challenges companies like Bayzat face in their growth-stage, so how did Talal manage to convince investors of the concept’s potential? “We’ve seen 350 per cent revenue growth each year and our team has expanded from 15 to 55 from 2016-17. Moreover, the new UAE laws have mandated health insurance and that means companies are increasingly turning to us to compare their insurance solutions.

We focus on constant R&D and have a

““

The shift to mandatory healthcare was a game-changer.

It changed the entire mentality of commercial and individual clients.

talented and dedicated tech team. There is also an increased awareness and budget for HR automation across UAE businesses, and overall a greater need for technological solutions across paper-dominant industries. Finally, we have a clear vision of where we’re headed,” he says.

A seasoned expert like Talal makes the process sound easy and pragmatic. But, is it all that simple? Surely there are many other factors that business owners need to consider. “Absolutely – it’s a complex process. My advice to those seeking finance would be to know the problem you’re trying to solve better than anyone else. This means understanding the finer nuances as well as the strategic trends.

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Automation is crucial to alleviating the pressure of repetitive work, and giving your workforce more time to develop their skills and contribute to business growth.

You also need to have an objective and analytical understanding of the size and scale of the problem. Be ready for rejection. You need to meet as many potential investors as possible to enable you to continuously refine and improve your pitch. Most will say no, but that’s how you improve. If someone is not interested, make sure you ask them a lot of questions to see what you can learn from the rejection - and don’t take it personally.

Finally, be yourself. Starting and growing a company is a monumental task, so you need to have partners who have the same values you do; otherwise, you’ll just make things harder on yourself than they already are. Don’t tell investors only what they want to hear, the process should be a healthy debate so that both parties can learn from one another and gauge the chemistry,” he shares.

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Dealing with operational setbacks Given the rapid pace at which Bayzat is growing, it is sure to face minor operational challenges. The company is coming to terms with scaling up its operations while maintaining the quality of outcome.

“Dealing with the large volume of requests across all our channels, particularly with DHA’s deadline on mandatory health insurance gave us a good exercise for analyzing our workforce projection.

The number of calls, requests, emails, social media messages, etc. need to be managed very closely in order not to hurt customer experience even when there’s a government deadline looming,” Talal opens up.

While this minor hurdle didn’t negatively impact the business, it made Talal conscious of the fact that if he failed to meet demand the user experience would

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The technological landscape is changing every day – it’s crucial to stay on top of it, and to always be on the lookout for potential amplification activity that could hinder or benefit your platform

get hurt. Given the amount of forewarning he had with regards to the law, he adjusted and increased his workforce in anticipation.

Talal and his team came up with a practical solution to the challenge. “We analysed the situation internally, reviewed how fast our pool of clients were growing, assessed where our improvement points lie (and underlying reasons), before considering recruitment and sought ways to automate some of our administrative work to give our team more time to answer questions and assist clients.”

The dynamic entrepreneur is also continually making improvements to achieve his productivity goals.

“Automation is crucial to alleviating the pressure of remedial/repetitive work, and giving your workforce more time to develop their skills and contribute to business growth. We were quick to automate our HR

processes, account management and sales force to give them more time to focus on our customers.”

Established: May 20, 2013

Staying abreast competition and technology The technology underlying Bayzat’s platform is essentially what makes it powerful - and unique in the market. But, as competitors build up robust systems to get ahead, how is Talal planning to keep up?

“Our technology, customer centricity, and expertise mark us from other competitors.

We are fiercely loyal to our customers and strive to deliver healthcare plans that fit their circumstances, are tailored to their needs, and in digestible formats they can easily access and understand. All our technological pursuits are with the aim of streamlining process and making HR/health insurance manageable.”

Employees: 55

Looking ahead What does the future of the ‘insurtech’ industry look like? “While it’s happened quite rapidly in the western world, I think that over the next few years automation is going to explode. More and more industries will look to streamline their businesses through automation across all department. This holds especially true for HR and healthcare,” he quips.

Talal has a clear plan in terms of exploiting the industry’s potential. He explains: “Before we expand into other areas of the MENA region, we want to cure the problems we continue to face in insurance and HR in the UAE. Through technology, we are innovating and looking for new ways to disrupt these predominantly paper-based industries – so our short-term plans are R&D, and looking for any software updates we can incorporate into our platform that will make the lives of our users easier.

Year on year growth: 350%

USP: Technology solutions that cure the opacity and time-consuming nature of health insurance & human resources.

Challenge takeaway: The challenge is how to empower people’s existing habits, not necessarily change them Instead, find their pain points and imagine ways to ease them.

Once we’ve added more technological notches to our belt, we’ll move into other areas of the Gulf.”

He Further adds: “Being proactive and asking questions. The technological landscape is changing every day – it’s crucial to stay on top of it, and to always be on the lookout for potential amplification activity that could hinder or benefit your platform. I think it’s the role of everyone in the company to embody this ethos for us to keep innovating and maintain our reputation as a pioneer in our industry.”

Finally, is there a lesson from his entrepreneurial journey that he would like to share with fellow business owners? “Do your research, backup your strategic decisions with data, and find new ways to solve pain points for your employees,” he advises.

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PARKING, AT YOUR FINGERTIPS! Nicolas Guillon and Sulaiman Azhar have an ambitious plan to revamp the way people find their parking spots.

SME Advisor explores if this young business could be the next big thing‌

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Nester’s premise is simple. It identifies empty parking spots and shares them with people that are looking for parking.

02. Nester’s short-term plan is to launch in Dubai and expand to neighbouring emirates within the year. The long-term plan is to expand to the MENA region and across the globe within the next three to five years.

NICOLAS GUILLON C0-FOUNDER NESTER

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s the sharing economy across the globe heats up, we’ve seen several disruptive ideas come to the forefront. From Airbnb and Uber to WeWork and Deliveroo, there is a platform filling a critical gap in almost every prolific sector. Nester is one such concept that is taking on the challenge of creating an app that enables you to share parking spots.

We sit down with Nicolas Guillon as he explains: “We are two co-founders, Sulaiman Azhar and I, and we are aiming to tackle parking woes in metropolitan cities like Dubai. We are developing a smart parking marketplace that connects parking seekers with private parking owners to rent parking without the need of exchanging access cards or remotes.”

Nester’s premise is simple. It identifies empty parking spots and shares them with people that are looking for parking.

“There are a lot of unused private parking spaces in residential and office buildings throughout the day. Our platform will enable parking owners to put their unused space on the market when they are away at work, or on vacation and parking seekers to search and book their parking ahead of time from just an hour to an entire month and access it from their smartphone,” he adds.

On the fast-track to growth Nester was founded in early 2017, which means it’s obviously in its nascent stages of growth. Speaking of the status of his business, Nicolas says: “We are an early stage start-up, and the product is currently under development. We have designed, prototyped our smart hardware and app, which are now being tested in a closed pilot since last month, where buildings are using it as a smart access control for their tenants.”

““

Be passionate in what you are doing as it requires a lot of hard work and motivation.

Stay focused and surround yourself with like-minded people. - Nicolas Guillon

Many might argue that it’s quite early to assess the young start-up’s true potential. Yet, this hasn’t stopped it from receiving attention – and appreciation.

Nester won the seed-stage start-up competition at STEP Conference in April, the same month the company was established, and last month Nester was named the third winner of the Dubai Smartpreneur competition organised by Dubai Chamber in association with Dubai Smart City initiative office.

In fact, this recognition also came with a financial incentive. As a great bonus, the start-up received a cash prize at the Smartpreneur competition as well as the marketing consultancy prize from Tonic International, which it won at STEP Conference.

So, what does Nicolas regard as the X-factor that makes their concept appealing to investors? Perhaps, it’s the fact that the concept is new in this region?

Nicolas reasons: “Other services that exist in the market use a traditional approach, and require a physical exchange of access cards, or remotes and money. We use a smarter approach, and give full control

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““ SULAIMAN AZHAR C0-FOUNDER NESTER

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Talk to potential customers before you start solving a problem. Dubai aims to be the smartest city in the world, and is a perfect place to experiment with disrupting traditional businesses with a smarter solution. Sulaiman Azhar

to the parking owner, who can with a toggle button put the parking away from the market for personal use. Due to the limited human friction, Nester is safer and is easily scalable. Each Nester user is identified which is an added safety for the buildings. Moreover, we are a solid team solving a universal problem of parking with an innovative and scalable solution with a potential for global growth.”

Nester has a solid pitch, so have they considered approaching investors? “We are a self-funded start-up, but Nester has generated a great interest from VCs and angel investors alike and we are looking to build relations with them for funding in the future. The future funding will be used for rapid expansion in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and for strategic marketing.

For now, we have a simple mantra: focus on executing the idea, talk to customers and validate the market needs. Once

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Established: April 27, 2017

Employees: 3

Year on year growth: 650% growth in 2016 globally USP: The parking marketplace, where you can search, book and access your parking through your smartphone – no hassle of tickets and coins. Stress-free!

Challenge takeaway: We’ve learnt that the knowledge of your market and customers is as important as your drive to make your idea a reality. we are on the right track, money will inevitably follow.”

Accelerating ahead It’s safe to say that the entrepreneurial duo has gotten off to a brilliant start.

But, how do they plan on successfully implementing their concept and launching it to the market? “Currently, we are solely focusing on executing the idea and tackling the challenges that come our way. Sales, marketing and product development are on the top of our agenda. We are also looking at expanding the team to launch quickly,” shares Nicolas.

Nester’s short-term plan is to launch in Dubai and expand to neighbouring emirates within the year. The long-term plan is to expand to the MENA region and across the globe within the next three to five years.

The regional transportation sector has been quite fertile in terms of opportunities and is undergoing rapid transformation.

Nicolas is pinning the progress of Nester on this growth. “The Smart Dubai initiative has created a lot of momentum and enthusiasm in adopting smart solutions for a better living and promotes a seamless city experience for residents and visitors. This initiative is driven to make Dubai the happiest city on earth and we are really thrilled and proud to contribute to it.”

with an ever-growing demand and limited spaces. We expect shared parking to be used around the globe as a solution to tackle traffic congestion, pollution and stress. There is also an ongoing shift towards driverless cars and we are paving the way for self-parking with smart access control systems,” he says excitedly.

Taking on the future With his finger on the pulse of the market, there’s no one better than Nicolas to share his take on what the future of his industry will look like, four years from now. “The sharing economy will inevitably become a major part of the global economy. Parking industry is no exception

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SHEDUL'S SMART, SENSIBLE SOFTWARE

Shedul isn’t just driving innovation in software scheduling, it’s also changing the endgame for salons across the region. SME Advisor catches up with its zestful team to take a closer look...

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Despite the challenges it has faced, the team at Shedul has managed to make serious achievements as a growing enterprise.

02. Shedul is solving a critical pain point for small businesses by redefining how they engage with customers through technology.

WILLIAM ZEQIRI CO-FOUNDER & CEO, SHEDUL.COM

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hedul.com is the world’s first subscription free booking platform for the Beauty and Wellness industry. The software takes the hassle out of running a business by automating all key processes such as: managing appointment bookings, point-of-sale, customer records, human resources, inventory, financial reporting etc. The platform is cloud-based build with latest technologies.

The burgeoning business recently received a round of funding and has been recognised by several prominent investors in the region.

Chris Rogers, Partner at Lumia Capital, said: “Shedul.com has made best-in-class software accessible to the massive beauty industry, which still largely operates offline. We are extremely impressed with the company’s growth trajectory and are delighted to invest in the team.” Meanwhile, Walid Mansour, Managing Partner at MEVP, remarked: “Shedul.com is a truly global success story, the growth they achieved in two years is remarkable. We’re upbeat about the company’s massive potential and are thrilled to have led the Series A round.”

With all the appreciation and much talked about success, what’s Co-founder and CEO William Zeqiri’s current state of mind? “Good free software spreads quickly. We’re solving a critical pain point for small businesses by redefining how they engage with customers through technology. We have salons where 80 per cent of their bookings are made online. Our integrated technology is helping businesses optimise their schedule with realtime online availability and in some cases, it has increased users’ revenue more than 30 per cent.”

The growth of his concept, however, can be traced back to several factors. “We signed up over 40K merchants in 120 countries in less than two years. Millions of bookings are made through the platform each month, growing at an average rate of 35 per cent

month-on-month. The platform is well on track to process over US$1.5 billion worth of appointment bookings by the end of 2017.

We are being branded as the fastest-growing platform in the beauty industry globally.

Most businesses that use our platform are based in the US. Here is the breakdown of key markets: 40 per cent US, 15 per cent UK, 11 per cent Australia, Canada seven per cent, MENA five per cent. Our growth is almost entirely organic through word-of-mouth.

Good free software spreads quickly. Our users are the best ambassadors of our brand and are raving about our platform in the industry community. We have a top 5/5 user rating on Capterra.com. We believe that if users require training on how to use our system, we have not done a good job building it,” explains William.

Seeking and securing finance Shedul’s most recent funding round of US$6m Series A closed in June 2017. The round was led by Dubai-based MEVP and backed by Dubai’s BECO Capital and San Francisco-based Lumia Capital. The new round of funding follows an earlier seed round also led by MEVP. The company plans to use the funds to scale its operation, hire new engineers and build a two-sided marketplace product offering.

“I think the investors noticed our ability to solve a real-world problem with an innovative product. We demonstrated traction and growth in terms of users. And most importantly, we articulated a clear monetisation strategy,” he outlines of his funding strategy.

The shortcomings of life as an SME What is one of the biggest operational challenge that Shedul currently faces? “The biggest operational challenge for a fastgrowing business like ours is scaling the team. Finding good talent and experienced

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Established: April 01, 2015

Employees: 22

Year on year growth: 1000% USP: The #1 booking software for salons and spas, used by 40,000+ businesses in more than 120 countries.

Challenge takeaway: Look ahead, keep innovating and never underestimate your competitors..

software engineers is always challenging.

The size of the engineering team dictates the pace of how fast we can deliver new innovative features to our user base. Moving fast is really important for technology companies,” shares William.

To solve these challenges, he’s opened an office in Warsaw, Poland, where he can attract top talent. “You need to think outside the box and make the hard decisions, even if you have to establish an office in another country.

Our engineering team has completely revamped the recruitment approach. For example, engineering candidates have a four-stage interview process, including a two-hour technical exam at our offices.

The technical exam has been important to identify quality candidates with practical experience solving real technical challenges.

It has been carefully crafted to ensure we hire the best. Only 10 per cent of all candidates we interview pass this stage.”

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Hiring aside, William and his team are also focusing on other areas of the business that can enhance productivity – and ultimately yield higher revenues. “We believe that company culture plays a big role in productivity. Employees need to be aligned to the vision and believe they’re making a big difference to our user community. We proactively reward productive employees that solve big challenges. We are very transparent with our internal communications,” says a pragmatic William.

He adds: “There are always things we can improve on as we grow. We need to keep working on our company culture to ensure we provide an environment where innovation thrives. If we focus on hiring the best talent we can overcome all challenges.”

Technology is, of course, a significant area of focus for William. “We’re constantly adopting the latest technologies to make us more productive and efficient. As a

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William’s 3-step pitching strategy

BUILD AND OPERATE A WORKING MVP (MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT) THAT HAS REAL CUSTOMERS USING IT. IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT TO FOCUS ON KEY FEATURES THAT ADD THE MOST VALUE.

““

The advent of AI, Machine Learning and on augmented reality will have a big impact in the beauty and wellness industry.

SHOW A TREND OF AT LEAST THREE MONTHS OF STRONG GROWTH AND TRACTION. THIS VALIDATES TO INVESTORS THAT USERS FIND VALUE IN YOUR OFFERING.

startup resources are limited and we’re always prioritizing initiatives that add the most value. We’ve implemented new and bleeding edge programming languages that give us a competitive advantage on our product with improved user-experience, faster deployments of new features with minimum overhead.

Taking strides Despite the challenges it has faced, the team at Shedul has managed to make serious achievements as a growing enterprise.

Speaking of its milestones, a proud William says: “Shedul has established an engineering office in Warsaw, Poland. Poland has some of the best engineers in the world and we’ve worked hard to setup a modern office there and attract the best talent possible. We’ve tripled our headcount in the last five months and delivered some key productivity features on our platform.”

BE METICULOUS WITH UNIT ECONOMICS, BUSINESS PERFORMANCE REPORTING, P&L, BUDGETS, AND OTHER STATISTICS. YOU NEED TO KNOW YOUR DATA, IT WILL GUIDE YOUR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND BUSINESS STRATEGY.

Four years from now Of course, the ardent entrepreneur is showing no signs of slowing down. So, where does William see Shedul headed four years from now? “We already operate in more than 120 countries around the world. Our focus will be additional product offering.

For example, very soon we’re launching a two-sided marketplace product. This is a consumer-booking platform (like Airbnb, booking.com etc.), where clients can book appointments directly with businesses. The way people interact with software services will fundamentally change. The advent of AI, Machine Learning and on augmented reality will have a big impact in the beauty and wellness industry. Businesses will offload more of their admin operations to platforms like our and focus on what they do best. The way consumers engage with business providers will be redefined through technology,” he concludes.

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REBUI LDI N G TRA DITI ONAL S CHO O L SYSTEMS Ibrahim Naji is leading a home-grown initiative called ImpactEd, which is a real-world project management system that distributes sustainable development challenges to university classrooms. As a passionate advocate of modern education, he shares his candid views on why today’s educational systems are failing their students and how he’s determined to bring a change…

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Students spend their entire youth in a boxed classroom, polarised from reality, checking boxes and solving theoretical non-existent problems, while communities around them thirst for innovative problem solvers.

02. The problem is that high schools as well as universities are increasingly unable to engage 21st century learners.

IBRAHIM NAJI FOUNDER IMPACTED

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remember sitting in class as a youngster, looking at the whiteboard and listening passively to what Professor Carlson had to say about the Albedo Effect and how it affected our environment, followed by hours of reading and intense note-taking. But, having very little room for creativity, critical thinking or practicality, I always found myself asking the professor: “when will I ever use this in my day-to-day life.” A question every student asks at a certain point in time because of the lack of practicality in what it is they are being taught. I remember applying for internships, going to conferences and taking on my own entrepreneurial initiatives to bridge the monumental gap that my studies had failed to fill. But when you’re paying between US$ 10,000 to 20,000 a year to attain a high school or college degree, you shouldn’t have to rely on external sources to prepare you for the real world. Sometimes I wonder just how many students have fallen through those cracks?

Education vs. practical learning Eight in 10 college students feel like their university education would be more fulfilling and preparing if their secondary educational experience had higher standards. There is an incredible gap between secondary education and workforce readiness; students don’t have the ability to solve real life challenges.

We are still relying on an educational system that addresses 19th century needs for labour, where graduates can perform simple and repetitive tasks. We live in such a fast-paced society, where the demand for skills and knowledge has shifted. In fact, in approximately 15 years, 65 per cent of graduates will be going into jobs that don’t yet exist. Given these circumstances, lessons that are being taught in classrooms today aren’t as relevant anymore.

Students spend their entire youth in a boxed classroom, polarised from reality, checking

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One of the biggest challenges is that there is an innate distrust between the various stakeholders, and critical issues are not being resolved with a 360-degree lens.

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65% of graduates will be going into jobs that don’t exist.

50% of universities are dissatisfied with their learning management provider.

boxes and solving theoretical non-existent problems while communities around them thirst for innovative problem solvers. On the other hand, you have businesses, government agencies and non-profit organisations, who continuously seek knowledge about how to approach these challenges, but lack the human resources to achieve their full potential. So, what if our leaders of tomorrow could grow their skills by solving the challenges of today? It’s time to consider our most important stakeholders.

Education institutions: time for reform If we look at the global challenges we’re facing, they are multi-faceted and cannot

be solved by a single stakeholder. It is a collaborative effort. One of the biggest challenges is that there is an innate distrust between the various stakeholders and critical issues are not being solved with a 360-degree lens. The world needs a more systemic solution with fresh eyes and a collaborative mindset.

The K12 market, as well as higher education institutions, have realised that they will eventually lose relevancy if they don’t adapt to the evolving climate of education.

The rise of e-learning giants that have attracted millions of students have forced a revolutionising ultimatum to schools. From

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Lessons that are taught in classrooms aren’t as relevant anymore for our fastpaced, tech-savvy world.

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a business perspective, companies have slowly but surely, embraced students as a force for change, yet none of the parties are moving fast enough. A collective platform is needed where communication between schools and organisations can be internalized and facilitated, within the traditional educational system.

The problem is that high schools as well as universities are increasingly unable to engage 21st century learners. They focus on theories, requiring students to spend years studying fictitious scenarios. This leaves our students disengaged, overwhelmed with debt and unprepared for the workforce. In fact,

seven in 10 college graduates state that their university education failed to prepare them for their careers. Granted, schools are attempting to correct this with technology, hopeful that the key to engaging 21st century learners lies on a screen. They are now spending US$13 billion on various educational technologies, and will be shelling out US$18 billion by 2018.

Consequently, 50 per cent of universities are dissatisfied with their learning management provider. And a gap like that demands a new player.

That is where RealEDU comes into play.

RealEDU is a project management system that facilitates real world problem solving

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within high school classrooms through collaboration with industry partners. The first student innovation hub for companies and organisations that cares about impact; bridging the massive disconnect between secondary education and workforce readiness.

Moving away from theoretical assignments and box-checking exams, to practical real world experiences. But the question still arises; how will high school students manage to deliver tangible solutions for corporations and government agencies?

That is where RealEDU comes into play.

RealEDU is a project management system that facilitates real world problem solving

within high school classrooms through collaboration with industry partners. The first student innovation hub for companies and organisations that care about impact; bridging the massive disconnect between secondary education and student workforce readiness. This solution is taking huge strides as it moves away from theoretical assignments and box-checking exams, to practical real world experiences. But the question still arises: how will high school students manage to deliver tangible solutions for corporations and government agencies?

Companies want to know, need to know how, how these demographics act, what these

demographics want to sustain the livelihood of their business?

Children that are currently in high-schools are the ones that will shape our tomorrow.

Therefore, providing companies with a portal into these students’ minds is what is going to sustain them. This is how you bring real world problem-solving to the K-12 market without compromising the value for companies.

With RealEDU looking to penetrate Asia within the coming months, our mission is to make sure that the world will have seen a major shift in education models, as communities will see their students as active assets rather than idle investments.

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Life in a smart city

Kendra L. Smith, Policy Analyst at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy, Arizona State University, shares her insights on how global smart cities are striving to strike the perfect balance between citizen happiness and technological advancement‌

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B EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Using data and electronic sensors in this way is often referred to as building “smart cities,” which are the subject of a major global push to improve how cities function.

02. Smart cities can improve the efficiency of city services by eliminating redundancies, finding ways to save money and streamlining workers’ responsibilities. The results can provide higher-quality services at lower cost.

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By 2030, 60 per cent of the world’s population is expected to live in mega-cities. How all those people live, and what their lives are like, will depend on important choices leaders make today and in the coming years.

Technology has the power to help people live in communities that are more responsive to their needs and that can actually improve their lives. For example, Beijing, notorious for air pollution, is testing a 23-foot-tall air purifier that vacuums up smog, filters the bad particles and releases clear air.

This isn’t a vision of life like on “The Jetsons.” It’s real urban communities responding in real-time to changing weather, times of day and citizen needs. These efforts can span entire communities. They can vary from monitoring traffic to keep cars moving efficiently or measuring air quality to warn residents (or turn on massive air purifiers) when pollution levels climb.

Using data and electronic sensors in this way is often referred to as building “smart cities,” which are the subject of a major global push to improve how cities function. In part a response to incoherent infrastructure design and urban planning of the past, smart cities promise real-time monitoring, analysis and improvement of city decision-making. The results, proponents say, will improve efficiency,

environmental sustainability and citizen engagement.

Smart city projects are big investments that are supposed to drive social transformation. Decisions made early in the process determine what exactly will change.

But most research and planning regarding smart cities is driven by the technology, rather than the needs of the citizens. Little attention is given to the social, policy and organisational changes that will be required to ensure smart cities are not just technologically savvy but intelligently adaptive to their residents’ needs. Design will make the difference between smart city projects offering great promise or actually reinforcing or even widening the existing gaps in unequal ways their cities serve residents.

City benefits from efficiency A key feature of smart cities is that they create efficiency. Well-designed technology tools can benefit government agencies, the environment and residents. Smart cities can improve the efficiency of city services by eliminating redundancies, finding ways to save money and streamlining workers’ responsibilities. The results can provide higher-quality services at lower cost.

For instance, in 2014, the Transport for London transit agency deployed a system that lets residents and London’s 19 million visitors pay for bus and subway fares more quickly and safely than in the past. When

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key feature of A smart cities is that they create efficiency. Welldesigned technology tools can benefit government agencies, the environment and residents.

riders touch or tap their phone or other mobile device on a reader when entering and exiting the bus and subway system, a wireless transaction deducts the appropriate amount from a user’s bank account.

The city benefits by reducing the cost of administering its fare payment system, including avoiding issuing and distributing special smartcards for use at fareboxes.

Transit users benefit from the efficiency through convenience, quick service and capped fares that calculate the best value for their contactless travel in a day or across a seven-day period.

Environmental effects Another way to save money involves real-time monitoring of energy use,

which can also identify opportunities for environmental improvement.

The city of Chicago has begun implementing an “Array of Things” initiative by installing boxes on municipal light poles with sensors and cameras that can capture air quality, sound levels, temperature, water levels on streets and gutters, and traffic.

The data collected are expected to serve as a sort of “fitness tracker for the city,” by identifying ways to save energy, to address urban flooding and improve living conditions.

Helping residents Perhaps the largest potential benefit from smart cities will come from enhancing residents’ quality of life. The opportunities cover a broad range of issues,

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KENDRA L. SMITH POLICY ANALYST MORRISON

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Smart city projects are big investments that are supposed to drive social transformation.

including housing and transportation, happiness and optimism, educational services, environmental conditions and community relationships.

Efforts along this line can include tracking and mapping residents’ health, using data to fight neighbourhood blight, identifying instances of discrimination and deploying autonomous vehicles to increase residents’ safety and mobility.

Ensuring focus on service, not administration Many of the efficiencies touted as resulting from smart city efforts relate to government functions. The benefits, therefore, are most immediate for government agencies and employees. The assumption, of course, is that what benefits government will in turn benefit the public.

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For instance, global market projections for smart cities are huge. Companies see big opportunities for selling technology to cities, and local leaders are eager to find new investors who will improve their communities. That can make smart cities appear to be a win-win situation.

Who wins from smart city projects?

When governments decide on smart city projects, they necessarily choose whom those efforts will benefit – and whom they will neglect. Even when it’s unintentional – which it often is – the results are the same: Not all areas of a smart city will be exactly equally “smart.” Some neighbourhoods will have a greater density of air-quality sensors or traffic cameras, for example.

And not all smart city projects are having completely positive effects. In India, for

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example, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to build 100 smart cities as a way to manage the needs of his country’s rapidly urbanizing population. Yet the efforts are bumping up against challenges new and old.

These include longstanding problems with land ownership documentation, developing policies to accommodate new markets and limit the old, and conflicts with vulnerable populations pushed out to make room for new smart city initiatives.

In Philadelphia, a programme intended to provide the city’s low-income, underemployed residents with job training on their smartphones didn’t address widespread socioeconomic inequality, among other problems. As one researcher put it, the program was “empty policy rhetoric” designed to attract business.

The much-ballyhooed Songdo City development in South Korea involved enormous investment from the public and private sectors to create a smart city billed as an urban hub of innovation and commerce. And yet, 10 years after it began, its highest praise has been from those who call it a “work in progress.” Others, less charitable, have called it an outright failure.

The reason should give us pause when designing other smart cities: Songdo was designed and built as a top-down, “hightech utopia” with no history and, crucially, without people at its centre.

To avoid these troubled fates, officials, business leaders and residents alike must keep a critical eye on smart city efforts in their communities. Projects must be both transparent and aimed at publicly desirable

improvements in society. Technology cannot become the focal point, nor the end goal.

60% of the world’s population is expected to live in mega-cities by 2030.

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TINY

DEVICES,

GIANT POSSIBILITIES Ofer Dekel, Machine Learning and Optimisation Group Expert at Microsoft’s Research Lab, and his team of experts are on a mission to create intelligent tiny devices that can help us with to day-to-day tasks. But, what’s more interesting is that he believes the capability to run these devices should be available to a larger demographic outside the technology world. John Roach of Microsoft dives into his exciting work and shares compelling insights…

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Factory floors arguably became the first places where AR was used daily to enhance worker productivity and streamline supply chains.

02. Not only does Analytics AR make data analysis and visualisation more compelling, but it allows people to literally dive and dig into their data.

JOHN ROACH WRITER AND RESEARCHER, MICROSOFT

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ometimes the best place to showcase the potential of a bold, world-changing technology is a flower garden. Take the case of Ofer Dekel, for example. He manages the Machine Learning and Optimisation group at Microsoft’s research lab in Redmond, Washington. Squirrels often devoured flower bulbs in his garden and seeds from his bird feeder, depriving him and his family of blooms and birdsong.

To solve the problem, he trained a computer-vision model to detect squirrels and deployed the code onto a Raspberry Pi 3, an inexpensive, resource-constrained singleboard computer. The device now keeps watch over his backyard and triggers his sprinkler system whenever the vermin pounce. “Every hobbyist who owns a Raspberry Pi should be able to do that,” said Dekel. “Today, very few of them can.” Dekel, an expert in machine learning, is aiming to solve that problem. He leads a multidisciplinary team of about 30 computer scientists, software engineers and research interns at Microsoft’s research labs in Redmond and Bangalore, India, that is developing a new class of machine-learning software and tools to embed artificial intelligence onto bread-crumb size computer processors. Early previews of the software are available for download on GitHub. The project is part of a paradigm shift within the technology industry that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently described during his keynote address at the company’s Build 2017 conference in Seattle.

“We’re moving from what is today’s mobilefirst, cloud-first world to a new world that is going to be made up of an intelligent cloud and intelligent edge,” he said.

Intelligent edge Creating the intelligent edge is a step toward realising the promise of a world populated with tiny intelligent devices at every turn – embedded in our clothes, scattered around

our homes and offices and deployed to perform tasks such as anomaly detection and predictive maintenance everywhere from car engines and elevators to operating rooms and oil rigs.

Today, these types of devices mostly work as sensors that collect and send data to machine-learning models running in the cloud. “All the processing requires a lot of compute, it requires a lot of storage,” said Shabnam Erfani, Director of Business and Technical Operations for Microsoft’s research lab in Redmond. “You can’t fit all that hardware into a low-cost embedded device.”

Dekel and his colleagues are aiming “to do the impossible,” she added. “To shrink and make machine learning so much more efficient that you can actually run it on the devices.” These intelligent devices are part of the so-called Internet of Things, or IoT, except that these things are intended to be smart, or intelligent, even without an Internet connection.

“The dominant paradigm is that these devices are dumb,” said Manik Varma, a Senior Researcher with Microsoft Research India and a Co-leader of the project. “They sense their environment and transmit their sensor readings to the cloud where all of the machine learning happens. Unfortunately, this paradigm does not address several critical scenarios that we think can transform the world.”

Pushing machine learning to edge devices reduces bandwidth constraints and eliminates concerns about network latency, which is the time it takes for data to travel to the cloud for processing and back to the device. On-device machine learning also limits battery drain from constant communication with the cloud and protects privacy by keeping personal and sensitive information local, Varma noted.

The researchers imagine all sorts of intelligent devices that could be created

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Creating the intelligent edge is a step toward realising the promise of a world populated with tiny intelligent devices at every turn.

with this method, from smart soil-moisture sensors deployed for precision irrigation on remote farms to brain implants that warn users of impending seizures so that they can get to a safe place and call a caregiver.

“If you’re driving on a highway and there isn’t connectivity there, you don’t want the implant to stop working,” said Varma.

“In fact, that’s where you really need it the most.”

Top down The team is taking top-down and bottom-up approaches to the challenge of deploying machine-learning models onto resourceconstrained devices. The top-down approach involves developing algorithms that compress machine-learning models trained for the cloud to run efficiently on devices such as the Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi Zero.

Many of today’s machine-learning models are deep neural networks, a class of predictors inspired by the biology of human brains. Dekel and his colleagues use a variety of techniques to compress deep neural networks to fit on small devices. A technique called weight quantization, for example,

represents each neural network parameter with only a few bits, sometimes a single bit, instead of the standard 32. “We can cram more parameters into a smaller space and the computer can churn through it much, much faster,” said Dekel.

To illustrate the difference, he played a video comparing a state-of-the-art neural network with and without quantization trained and deployed for computer vision on Raspberry Pi 3s: The models are equally accurate, but the compressed version runs about 20 times faster.

Early previews of these compression and training algorithms are available for download on GitHub. The team is also working on tools that will enable hobbyists, makers and other non-machine-learning experts to navigate the end-to-end process of collecting and cleaning data, training the models and deploying them onto their devices.

“Giving these powerful machinelearning tools to everyday people is the democratisation of AI,” said Saleema Amershi, a human-computer-interaction Researcher in the Redmond lab. “If we have the technology to put the smarts on the tiny

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On-device machine learning also limits battery drain from constant communication with the cloud and protects privacy by keeping personal and sensitive information local.

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devices, but the only people who can use it are the machine-learning experts, then where have we gotten?”

Another compression technique being investigated by the team is pruning, or sparsification, of neural networks to remove redundancies, which should result in faster evaluation times as well as the ability to deploy onto smaller computers, such as the ARM Cortex M7.

Bottom up All this compression work will only make existing machine-learning models 10 to 100 times smaller. To deploy machine-learning onto Cortex M0s, the smallest of the ARM processors – they are physically about the size of a red-pepper flake and Dekel calls them “computer dust” – the models need to be made 1,000 to 10,000 times smaller.

“There is just no way to take a deep neural network, have it stay as accurate

as it is today, and consume 10,000 less resources. You can’t do it,” said Dekel.

“So, for that, we have a longer-term approach, which is to start from scratch.

To start from math on the white board and invent a new set of machine-learning technologies and tools that are tailored for these resource-constrained platforms.” The bottom-up approach starts from the tiny end of the spectrum, where team members are focused on building a library full of training algorithms, each tuned to perform optimally for a niche set of scenarios: one for applications such as the brain implant, for example, and another to detect anomalies such as in a jet engine to predict when maintenance is required.

The smallest device that the group has focused on is the Arduino Uno, a severely resource-constrained single-board computer with only two kilobytes of RAM. The algorithms train machine-learning models

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more productive and better integrated into society,” said Varma.

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Many of today’s machine-learning models are deep neural networks, a class of predictors inspired by the biology of human brains.

for tasks such as answering yes-or-no and multiple-choice questions, predicting likely target values and ranking a list of items.

These models are inspired by cloud-based systems, but they are being re-engineered in ways that shrink the amount of data learned, reduce computational complexity and limit memory requirements yet maintain accuracy and speed. “Ultimately, you get predictions that are almost as accurate as (cloud-based neural networks) but now your model size is very little so you can deploy it for a few kilobytes of RAM,” explained Varma.

A prototype device in development to showcase the potential of this research is an intelligent walking stick for Varma, who is visually impaired, that can detect falls and issue a call for assistance. Another potential application is an intelligent glove that can interpret American Sign Language and voice the signed words through a speaker. “I like helping people with their impairments be

Imagining the future The drive to embed AI on tiny devices is part of a broader initiative within Microsoft’s research organisation to envision technologies that could be pervasive a decade from now. For Dekel and his colleagues, this is a world filled with intelligent, secure devices built with tools that are accessible to anyone with an idea and desire to make it.

For now, the research project is serving the maker community – people who have problems such as Dekel’s with squirrels and a vision to solve them with homemade technology. Other makers are domain experts such as a swimmer who wants to train a fitness band to count laps and distinguish between freestyle, breaststroke and butterfly.

Varma envisions a role for these makers throughout industry as well, developing intelligent, secure devices optimised for anomaly detection and predictive maintenance tasks. “Fixing something when it is broken,” he noted, “is much more costly than identifying the problem before the break.” Only a few of these devices will ever exist if the work of making them is left to the relatively small population of computer scientists with PhDs in artificial intelligence, noted Amershi. She is working on interfaces and other tools to reduce the complexity and monotony of training and deploying machine-learning models onto edge devices so that makers of all kinds can be productive.

“Machine learning is not a one-shot thing,” she said. “It’s an art. It takes some effort, some iterations, to steer these machine-learning models to do the thing you want them to do.”

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INGENIOUS INVENTION OF THE MONTH:

EKSO BI ON ICS Ekso Bionics is using technology to create a range of products that will help patients with certain types of injuries move freely and independently. It is a revolutionary step in the world of medical rehabilitation and we take a closer look at the concept and how it works…

THE CONCEPT: EKSO BIONICS IS ONE OF THE FEW COMPANIES TAKING BIG LEAPS IN THE FIELD OF ‘ROBOTIC EXOSKELETONS’. THINK OF ROBOTIC EXOSKELETONS AS WEARABLE SUITS THAT ENABLE HUMANS TO MOVE THEIR LIMBS WITH MORE POWER, STRENGTH AND FLEXIBILITY. THIS TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN AROUND FOR A WHILE, BUT HASN’T REACHED ITS FULL POTENTIAL IN THE COMMERCIAL WORLD. NEW CAPABILITIES SUCH AS ROBOTICS, SENSORS AND CLOUD COMPUTING HAVE RESHAPED THIS CONCEPT AND MADE IT MORE ADVANCED THAN EVER BEFORE. THE CHALLENGE IT ADDRESSES: EKSO BIONICS AND ITS RANGE OF PRODUCTS ARE CREATED FOR PATIENTS SUFFERING FROM STROKE OR SPINAL CORD INJURY. THESE PRODUCTS HELP PATIENTS GAIN MOBILITY AND REMEMBER THEIR WALKING PATTERNS. THE COMPANY’S EKSOGT, FOR INSTANCE, IS A WEARABLE EXOSKELETON DESIGNED FOR STROKE AND SPINAL CORD INJURY PATIENTS THAT HELPS THEM RECOVER AND GAIN STRENGTH TO WALK. THE EXOSKELETON CAN ALSO BE PERSONALISED AS PER THE PATIENT’S INDIVIDUAL NEEDS AND PACED ACCORDING TO THEIR RECOVERY SPEED. MOREOVER, IT COMES WITH A CONTROLLER THAT GIVES THERAPISTS A CHANCE TO CHANGE SETTINGS IN REAL-TIME. SUCH PRODUCTS ARE RESHAPING THE WORLD OF MEDICAL REHABILITATION AND ARE GIVING PHYSICIANS A LOT OF SUPPORT IN SPEEDING UP PATIENT RECOVERY. MOREOVER, THESE PRODUCTS CAN TRANSMIT CRITICAL PATIENT INFORMATION TO PHYSICIANS AND DOCTORS. FOR INSTANCE, THE COMPANY’S EKSOPULSE CLOUDENABLED SOFTWARE STORES AND SHARES PATIENT ANALYTICS. IT IS DESIGNED IN A USER-FRIENDLY WAY, WITH A SIMPLE DASHBOARD GIVING PHYSICAL THERAPISTS ALL THE INFORMATION THEY IN ONE PLACE. Find out more about this product at http://eksobionics.com/about/overview/.

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